The market demand for financial planning products and services continues to expand. While a few customers may have the knowledge and expertise to plan and manage their own equity portfolios, many customers may elect to retain the services of financial experts such as a certified financial planner (CFP) and/or a personal financial advisor (PFA). Commercially available financial planning tools and services are primarily geared towards mainstream customers that have traditional assets such as IRA and/or 401K investments, company pension plans, social security benefits, life insurance policies and similar others.
Members of the military typically receive numerous financial benefits that are often unique to the military and may not be generally available to the mainstream clients. For example, allowances such as basic allowance for subsistence (BAS) and basic allowance for housing (BAH) and special income such as combat pay are provided to military members. Traditional financial planning tools and services, which are typically geared towards the mainstream clients, are often unable to incorporate benefit parameters that are unique to the military members. As a result, the financial planning needs of the military members are often unmet. In some cases, some financial advisors and planners, who may or may not have the expertise in military benefits, may manually develop a financial plan for military members on a case-by-case basis. Due to the complexities in the military benefits such as tax treatment of combat pay, the manually developed financial plans for the military members may be prone to error, be inaccurate and/or be outdated.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide improved financial planning tools and techniques that automatically incorporate military benefits.